Bees mostly gone from Concord neighborhood

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A residual amount of approximately 300-500 aggressive bees swarm at a home along Hitchcock Road in Concord, Calif., on Saturday, May 14, 2016. The son of the homeowner is an amateur bee keeper who has several honey bee hives and kept a few at his parents home discovered that one of the hives had become aggressive yesterday, while removing them in preparation for renovations to the backyard. That hive was taken away and destroyed. Concord Police are warning people to avoid the area after receiving several calls from residents about the aggressive bees. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)

A residual amount of approximately 300-500 aggressive bees swarm at a home along Hitchcock Road in Concord, Calif., on Saturday, May 14, 2016. The son of the homeowner is an amateur bee keeper who has several honey bee hives and kept a few at his parents home discovered that one of the hives had become aggressive yesterday, while removing them in preparation for renovations to the backyard. That hive was taken away and destroyed. Concord Police are warning people to avoid the area after receiving several calls from residents about the aggressive bees. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group)

CONCORD — The storm from the swarm of aggressive bees that terrorized a neighborhood gave way to clearer skies Sunday, but some isolated patches that it left behind carried a punch.

“The swarms are gone,” Concord police spokesman Corp. Chris Blakely said Sunday afternoon. “It is safer. But as it gets warmer, you’ll see more and more of the isolated (bees), and there’s no doubt, they are very, very aggressive. So while the swarms are gone, it’s not something that’s going to go away entirely overnight. So I wouldn’t go to that area if it’s not necessary.”

The bees, suspected by an expert to be Africanized killer bees that migrated north first from South America and then through Southern California, killed two dogs and hospitalized two people in the 3800 block of Hitchcock Road after appearing to take over a honeybee hive Friday, police said.

The dogs, two miniature Dachshunds, were stung more than 50 times in their backyard.

“We’re doing OK,” the dogs’ owner, 36-year-old Chris Szehner, said Sunday as he stood behind his front door with it slightly ajar as two bees hovered in a circle between him and a reporter. “Still kind of in shock.”

The bees on Friday also attacked their keeper and a mail carrier. Both were hospitalized but expected to be OK.

“It’s better. I mean (Friday or Saturday), you wouldn’t have been able to stand in front of my door,” said Mike Malley, who lives across the street from Szehner. “There were swarms everywhere.”

The bees on Friday and Saturday also stung a child, news reporters and bee expert Norman Lott. They became such a problem that residents were advised to stay indoors and shut their windows. Those in cars were told to keep their windows shut, and pedestrians were kept away from the area.

Most of the bees returned to the hive Saturday night, and the owner used soap and water to kill them, Blakely said. The surviving bees came from those who didn’t return in clusters to the original hive. The owner destroyed the original comb, Blakely said.

Bee expert Lott of the Mount Diablo Bee Keepers Association suspected the bees were Africanized killer bees and took DNA samples from some of the dead ones to pursue his hunch.

“By the time I got to the guy’s door, I was inundated,” Lott said of his arrival to the home where the bees got loose. “I’m stung all the time; it’s not a big deal.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Malley said. “I couldn’t have imagined that kind of aggression. I’ve had yellow jackets chase after me; that’s as close as I could compare it. That was nothing like this.”

The homeowner was unavailable for comment Sunday. Blakely said police would monitor the situation.

Contact Rick Hurd at 925-945-4789 and follow him at Twitter.com/3rdERH. Staff writers Joyce Tsai and Katy Murphy contributed to this story.